Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [32]
The Earl of Angus and his brother Sir George had tried to control the childhood of the late King James V, and of the present young Queen Mary; but despite English bribes and English pensions, they had failed. Now Angus was old, and there remained only Sir George, smooth, clever, nimble-witted; of dwindling account in the world of affairs, but with a son whose heritage he was guarding and for whom he snatched at what honours he could. And there was something else. In a fertile jungle of treachery and betrayal, George Douglas and Lymond had more than once matched their wits. Of all the Scots at Court except Erskine, Sir George alone knew Francis Crawford of Lymond really well.
There was still time to retreat. Robin Stewart turned round, enquiring, at the foot of the stairs. A rare smile flickered over the ollave’s dark face: and he ran downstairs lightly to join him.
Down below, the climate was scholarly, part-inebriated and wholly sporting. Michel Hérisson seized them both as they tussled through the back-thumping crowd, ale in hand: Stewart’s white silk shoulder was scarlet with claret and Thady Boy, squeezing in grease-spattered motley past a man killing himself on a double-bellows, was exuberant: ‘Ah, dear God: how The O’LiamRoe would come into his own here now. But’—as Stewart’s face froze—‘how could we risk it, and him born with thumbs on his feet: you would find him flat in the very next edition of Servetus, folded duodecimo.’
Michel Hérisson winked broadly at the Archer. ‘How’s your learning, Master Ollave? Have you Latin?’
‘Are you asking an Irishman? Do we breathe?’ said Thady Boy, and bent over the printed pages. ‘Ah, dhia, he was a woeful fool that one; and the words coming off him like a dog shedding mud.…’
The more precocious uses of a portable printing press held no interest for Michel Hérisson, whose cheerful and disrespectful exploit it was; but an attack on one of his authors was Nirvana. He and the ollave plunged in, tongues flailing, while Robin Stewart stood by, full of proprietorial pride and black jealousy. In the end, he broke in. ‘You’ve a cellarful tonight, man. How in God’s name can you work in this crowd?’
‘They’re here for the fun. There’s paper coming.’
It was the kind of recklessness that Stewart could not stand. He raised a prickly eyebrow. ‘Getting a bit cocksure, aren’t you? You’re taking in paper tonight, with the King at the gates and the whole place heaving like an anthill?’
‘Why not? They’ll think it is another patch for the Pegasus Arch.’
He was probably right. His paper mill was twenty miles away; his arrangements were typically neat. The cart would arrive at Rouen, bearing his marble or his clay, his new furnace or his fuel; and in the false bottom lay the quires, ready to drop by grille and chute straight into the cellars while the cart stood, innocently unloading, in the inner courtyard. In the cellar, there were cupboards everywhere: in the base of a vast sculpture, with the armatures showing like the ribs of a bog-corpse; in the floor; in the bottom of the paste trough. Stewart thought he would take Thady Boy home.
Thady Boy had gone. Instead, a tall man in handsome blue lounged at his side. ‘Hullo, Stewart. Who’s your portly friend?’ It was Sir George Douglas; and Stewart reacted typically.
‘I wouldna call him friend, just. It’s Ballagh, one of the two Irish I’m bear-leading till Thursday.’
‘You ought to keep an eye on him. He’s over there with Abernaci. Does he talk English?’
‘Oh, aye, and Irish and Irish-French and Irish-Latin for good measure, the times that he’s not snoring drunk. All you can say for him is that he’s under no illusions about his master. They’re going on Thursday.’
It happened to be news. Sir George said, ‘Oh, they’re going?’ and immediately lost all interest in whatever speculation had inspired his enquiry. He moved off, and Stewart pressed